This Harper's Weekly cartoon by Thomas Nast presents the
confusion of an evenly-divided U. S. Senate as a circus.

As Reconstruction ended in the 1870s, Democrats regained political
dominance in the South. In the rest of the country, elections were
competitive between the two major parties. In the extremely close
presidential election of 1880, the Republican ticket showed surprising
strength (although losing) in the Southern states of Tennessee,
Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida. That encouraged the new
president, James Garfield, to work for a political realignment in the
region by focusing on economic issues to attract Southern industrialists
and businessmen to the Republican party.

The most likely leader for such a coalition of Republicans and
disgruntled Democrats in the South was Senator William Mahone of
Virginia. (In the cartoon, he is the short, long-bearded man
standing on the Virginia pedestal.) Mahone had made his fortune in
railroads and served as a major general in the Confederate army.
During the economic depression of the 1870s, Mahone became angry at his
state's political leadership, whom he blamed for his railroad's
bankruptcy, and broke with the Democrats to form the
"Readjuster" movement. The Readjuster platform called
for shifting one-third of the state debt to West Virginia (which split
off from Virginia in 1863), refinancing
the rest of the debt at lower interest rates, repealing the poll tax,
reducing property taxes, and increasing funding to public education and
state charities.

In 1877, Mahone ran unsuccessfully for governor, but in 1879, the
Readjusters won a majority in the Virginia legislature and elected
Mahone to the U. S. Senate. When Congress convened in special
session on March 4, 1881, the new Senate contained 37 Democrats, 37
Republicans, and two independents--Mahone and David Davis of
Illinois.

Davis had been a Supreme Court justice and an unsuccessful candidate
for the Liberal Republican presidential nomination in 1872. His
election to the Senate in January 1877 by a Democratic-Greenback
coalition was important in the Electoral College controversy
of that year. In March 1881, Davis announced that he would vote on
organizational matters (committee appointments and Senate officers) with
the Democrats, but would otherwise be independent of party. Nast,
however, portrays Davis as a clown who leans on the Democratic whip,
Senator Benjamin Hill of Georgia (appearing as a whip-bearing
ringmaster), while reading from his book of indecision ("wiggle
waggle"; "From the Supreme Bench to the Fence").

Meanwhile, Mahone declared that he was "in every sense a free
man," and rejected Hill's efforts to make him toe the Democratic
line. Mahone's vote, plus Vice President Chester Arthur's
tie-breaking ballot, allowed the Republicans to elect the Senate's
committee chairmen. In return, the Republicans named Mahone as
chairman of the important Agriculture Committee, shared federal
patronage with him in Virginia, and attempted to have his candidates
elected to the Senate offices of secretary and sergeant of arms.

Infuriated Democrats could do nothing about the first two moves, but
balked at the third by using stalling tactics to block the entire
confirmation process. On May 4, a frustrated President Garfield
removed the Mahone protégés from consideration as Senate
officers. Democrats promptly ended their filibuster and allowed
the other administration nominees to be voted on. The special
session, which normally would have lasted less than two weeks, ended on
May 20, 1881, eleven weeks after it began.

When Congress reconvened in another special session in October 1881,
following the death of President Garfield, David Davis was elected
president pro tempore of the Senate. In the absence of a vice
president, he was next in line for the presidency. The new U.S.
president, Chester Arthur, attempted to replicate the Virginia model of
a Republican-Readjuster coalition across the rest of the South.
Although the early 1880s were the high point of cooperation in the
region between Republicans and independents, Republicans were unable to
repeat the brief success of the Mahone Readjuster movement.